sions limits of the sort that it has spent the last two decades evading. The Eu- ropeans, who are already operating under such constraints, have pledged to cut their emissions by twenty per cent by 2020, and have said that they would agree to a thirty-per-cent cut if other nations followed suit. The new Japa- nese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has committed his country to cutting its emissions by twenty-five per cent. In the United States, a bill that would re- duce emissions by seventeen per cent narrowly passed the House in June, only to become bogged down in the Senate; it is unclear if the bill will reach the Senate floor this year, or, if so, whether it has the votes to pass. (The United States is using a baseline year of 2005, while the Europeans and the Japanese are using 1990, which means that the proposed American cuts are significantly more modest than they sound. ) Meanwhile, a crucial deadline ap- proaches. In December, many of the same players who met in New York last week will travel to Copenhagen to try to hash out a new international climate agreement. In contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, which was designed as a sort of warmup exercise (and which the United States never agreed to), this new treaty is supposed to be the real thing: a pact strong enough to avert, as Obama put it, "irreversible catastrophe." Both China and India, which have long resisted emissions targets, have recently signalled a willingness to make a deal. If the American team shows up in Copenha- gen with nothing to offer, though, it's hard to imagine how such a deal could be struck. (Although China recently overtook the U.S. as the world's largest CO 2 producer on an annual basis, the U.S. remains far and away the largest source of cumulative emissions in the at- mosphere.) As John Bruton, the Euro- pean Union's Ambassador to Washing- ton, observed recently in the London Telegraph, "Is the U.S. Senate reallyex- pecting all the other countries to make a serious effort on climate change at the Copenhagen conference in the absence of a clear commitment from the United States?" There is no reason to doubt Obamàs sincerity about climate change. In addi- tion to the actions he mentioned at the U.N., his Administration has, most significantly, classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a move that could eventually lead to its regulation under the Clean Air Act. And the President is clearly frustrated by the stalemate in the Senate. But at this late date sincerity is not enough. When the President proposed that Congress take up a climate bill "2.. c. / W'/rr v S hA nVf h Vi ý') . \ f . . YI' "Who did the damn crossword?" along with health-care legislation and, on top of that, regulatory reform, he made an enormous gamble. This gam- ble, at some point, could have been called bold; increasingly, it just seems naIve. For the world to avoid "dangerous anthropogenic interference," the United States is, finally, going to have to live up to the commitments it made under the Framework Convention. And, in order for this to happen, Obama is going to have to move climate change to the top of his agenda-quickly. As the President himself put it last week, "The time we have to reverse this tide is run- . " nlng out. -Elizabeth Kolbert FLAIR DEPT. BIG PIN fiN t. t... .... : : : . ... -,. . ... ." - . _ . ..- "':Y" I '..: (i P eople who wear pins do so for vari- ous reasons: to look nice (Qyeen Elizabeth, débutantes), to identify them- selves (fraternity pledges, Realtors), to convey enthusiasms (Trekkies, conven- tioneers), to get fired up (T.G.I. Friday's employees). At least since the days of George Washington, who sometimes wore a diamond eagle given to him by the French Navy, political pin-wear- ing-all those enamel flags!-has been its own discipline. Perhaps its most com- mitted exponent is Madeleine Albright, who as Secretary of State became known for using a repertoire of brooches to sig- nal, or to sway, the diplomatic mood. A stalled negotiation might have elicited from her jewelry box a turtle in lapis la- zuli; a friendly summit, the dandelion with a moonstone for its puff; a conten- tious encounter, a rhinestone bee or a copper-pincered crab. In an introductory essay to Albright's latest book, "Read My Pins," David Revere McFadden, the chief curator of the Museum of Arts and Design, which is mounting an accompa- nying exhibition, appraises Albright's pins as "gentle implements of statecraft"- cloisonné carrots and sterling-silver sticks. "God, this Native American stuff looks fabulous!" Albright said last week.